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> Posted by Ariel Schwartz, Senior Editor, Co.Exist

The following post was originally published on Fast Company’s Co.Exist.

The challenge was simple, or so it seemed: Pay my bills and complete a handful of money-related errands before my work shift began at noon. It was harder than I ever could have imagined.

In reality, I wasn’t handling my own finances; I was participating in a simulation of what it’s like to be one of the underbanked—that is, to be one of the 7.7 percent of Americans with limited access to traditional banking services. The Financial Solutions Lab, a spin-off of the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), put on the simulation for a group of entrepreneurs, nonprofit employees, and banking executives so that they could come up with new product ideas for addressing the challenges of cash flow management.

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